MIDDBRIEFS

Author: Katie Flagg

Orange Grove Gospel to perform Saturday

The Orange Grove Gospel Choir of Durham, N.C., will return to Middlebury College on Saturday to perform in Mead Chapel at 4 p.m. The choir's performance, the third at the College, will celebrate the conclusion of this week's Religious Life Awareness Week.

The Orange Grove Gospel Choir's Saturday performance coincides this year with the announcement of the annual Angels Award. The award, given every year to a sophomore woman of color, memorializes four first-year students who were killed in an automobile accident in 2001. The parents of students of Anisa Gamble, Tiffany Holmes, Iniko Johnson and Maika Prewitt established the Angels Award in the wake of their daughters' tragic deaths to honor women at the College who embody the spirit of all four students. This year's Angels Award will be honored during Saturday's concert, which is free and open to the public. Donations to the Angels Endowment Fund are appreciated.

The Orange Grove Gospel Choir is remembered best by many College community members for the comfort its members provided in the wake of Gamble's, Holme's, Johnson's and Prewitt's deaths.



College hosts event on women in academia

This Saturday Middlebury College will host a symposium addressing the controversies and questions surrounding women in academia. The symposium was organized in the wake of public remarks made by former Harvard president Lawrence Summers in 2005 that questioned the role women play in higher education. The event will feature a panel of women scholars in philosophy, history, education, psychology and economics, and will take place in the conference room of the Robert A. Jones '59 House.

Panelists for the event, which will last from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., include Helen Horowitz, Sydenham Clark Parsons professor of history and American studies at Smith College; Mary Ann Dzuback, associate professor of education and history at Washington University of St. Louis; Roxanne Gudeman, adjunct professor of psychology at Macalester College; Jane Roland Martin, professor emeritus of philosophy from University of Massachusetts, Boston; Barbara Gault, vice president and director of research at the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and research professor at George Washington University; Diana Strassman, a senior research fellow at Rice University and editor of Feminist Economics; and Ann Mari May, visiting associate professor of economics at Middlebury College.



Faculty garner awards for scholarship, research

Faculty members Ellen Oxfeld, Ana Martinez-Lage, Gloria Estela Gonzalez, and Michael Kraus have been honored recently with research awards, fellowships and grants for their scholarship. Oxfeld, of the Sociology and Anthropology department, received a received a research award from the Fulbright Scholar Program for her scheduled leave next year. Oxfled will spend Spring 2007 in Mei Xian, Guangdong, China working on a research project titled, "Food and Cultural Transformation in Rural China." She will be affiliated with Jiaying University in Meizhou, Guangdong.

Martinez-Lage of the Spanish department received a fellowship from the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation providing funding for a curriculum development project titled, "One country, four languages: Exposing the linguistic plurality of Spain." During her leave during the 2006-2007 academic year, Martinez-Lage will also take a course in Basque at the University of Pamplona.

Also of the Spanish department, Gonzalez also received a fellowship from the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation for her project titled, "Invisible Mexico: Migrant Workers in Vermont". This grant will provide support for a two-month trip to Mexico this summer to gather materials and conduct interviews in preparation for incorporating service learning into her course, Latin American Perspectives on the U.S.

In the Political Science department, Kraus has been awarded a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) for a book project titled "Between Democracy and Dictatorship: Edvard Benes, Czechoslovakia and the Great Powers, 1938-1948." The grant will support his research in Czech and Russian archives next year.